by Jacob Whaler
Dropping his hands to the rail, he looks out on the landscape. The open plain below the shrine enlarges or shrinks on his whim, large enough or small enough to accommodate any number of visitors. Around the edges, he places picturesque rice-patties and cone-shaped mountains to add a sense of harmony and peace.
In the distance, Mount Fuji rises in majesty.
A gentle hand touches his shoulder. He turns to see one of his assistants, clad in a lustrous Shinto robe of gold. She smiles and bows.
“It is high-tide at the Itsukushima Shrine,” she says. “The ceremony will soon begin.”
Miyazawa nods and inhales the sweet fragrance emanating from her. “Let us go and unveil the Gift to all.”
CHAPTER 79
The rain stops.
“Let’s kill him while we can.” Alexa points her pulse rifle down at Ryzaard. Her finger twitches on the trigger.
From behind, Matt steps forward. “No.” His blue skin is gone. He grabs the barrel with his hand, jerks it away from Alexa and throws it to the pavement. “Killing is not the answer. Not anymore.”
“Isn’t that why we came here?”
“That’s why he came here,” Matt says. “I know better now.”
Alexa stares back at Matt. Her mouth drops open. “Have you lost your mind?”
“Something happened just now.” Matt pulls Jessica closer. “Something terrible and wonderful.”
Jessica, Alexa and Yarah all freeze.
“What are you talking about?” Jessica says.
Matt points down at Ryzaard. “Him. I was inside his mind. I saw his life. All of it.” He slips a glowing white Stone out of his pocket. “I can’t kill him. He’s wrong, but I can’t kill him.” He looks up from face to face. “I won’t kill him.”
“But he’s a murderer!” Alexa says the words one at a time, slowly and loudly. “He’s killed millions without regret, some of them members of my family. He’ll kill millions more to get what he wants. He doesn’t deserve to live.” She picks up her pulse rifle and pumps it. “One shot and we’ll be rid of this monster. The world will thank us.”
“You may be right,” Matt says. “But killing is not the answer.”
Alexa backs up a couple of steps. “I don’t believe this. What have you become? Some kind of sick pacifist?” She moves her gaze to Jessica. “Can you please talk some sense into him?”
“Look,” Matt says. “All is said was that I’m not going to kill him. I didn’t say I was going to do nothing. I want to stop him as much as you do, but this isn’t the way. If we kill him now, someone else will just step into his shoes and take over.” He tosses his Stone up and down in his palm. “I severed the connection between him and his Stones. Temporarily. He’s frozen in time and can’t be killed. He’ll wake up in a few minutes and open his eyes. We can get away without being detected while his Stones are dead. Maybe we can figure out how to stop him without committing murder.”
Jessica looks into Matt’s eyes. “Are you sure about this? There are times when killing is justified. Isn’t it OK to kill one man so an entire world can live in peace?”
“Look, Jess. There’s a lot I still don’t understand.” Matt reaches down and strokes Yarah’s head. “People have always looked for ways to justify killing. And it just results in more killing and more suffering. Maybe it’s time we take a different path. Maybe I’m just being naïve. But I’m not going to do the same thing to him that he wants to do to me.”
Yarah looks up at Matt. “I think he’s right.” She slips her fingers into his. “Somebody has to decide to stop the killing. Or it will just go on forever.”
Alexa takes another step back. “I don’t believe it.” She turns to walk away and then bends down, picks the pulse rifle off the pavement, twists around, drops the tip toward Ryzaard and pulls the trigger.
The shot echoes off walls of steel and glass up and down the skyscraper canyon.
The black pulse projectile spins in the air just above the old man’s forehead. Eventually the spinning dies down, and the bullet rolls onto the street.
Jessica looks at Matt and nods. “Let’s go.”
He turns to Alexa. “Are you coming with us?”
“No,” she says. “It’s been an enlightening experience, but I have other plans.”
“Are you sure?” Matt says.
“Ryzaard was right. You’re going to lose.” Alexa’s eyes focus squarely on Matt. “Everything.” She turns and walks away.
Yarah cradles her white Stone in one hand and pulls down on Matt’s shirt with the other. “She going to come back later, after we’re gone, and try to kill Ryzaard before he wakes up. Then she’s going to take his Stones.”
“Don’t do it, Alexa. It won’t work.” Matt yells at the lone figure walking down the middle of the street. “Come with us.”
She keeps walking away, the pulse rifle swung over her shoulder, reflecting bits of neon pastel from the light show high on the walls above.
Matt jogs over to the sidewalk, picks up his backpack and runs back to Jessica and Yarah. “Where to?” He slings the pack onto one shoulder. “We only have time for one quick jump.”
“Anywhere on the planet?” Jessica lets the tip of her rifle drop to the ground.
“Anywhere.” Matt pulls a disposable jax from his pack. “Just give me the GPS coordinates.”
“Let’s get as far away from here as we can.”
“Agreed.”
Jessica holds Yarah close and presses her back into Matt. “There’s this little town on the eastern tip of Hokkaido.”
“Nemuro?”
“How’d you know?”
Matt plays his fingers on the side of the jax and nods his head. “Never been there, but I’ve heard about it. Not much more than a fishing village and a bunch of farmers. Very rural.”
“Just the way I like it,” Jessica says. “I spent some time there, while you were away. And I have a friend there, if she’s still alive.”
Yarah looks up. “I’m hungry.”
“Fishing village.” Matt scratches his chin. “Fresh fish. Nice and Raw. Maybe that’s not such a bad idea.” He wraps his arms around Jessica and reaches down to touch Yarah’s shoulders.
Light flashes across the wet pavement just as it starts to rain.
CHAPTER 80
Alexa sees what she’s been waiting for, a burst of light three blocks up the street. She slips the pulse rifle off her shoulder and starts running back to Ryzaard through the rain.
When she gets there, his eyes are still closed. Black Stones litter the street. Laying down the pulse rifle, she picks up each of the Stones, careful to close her fist around them for maximum skin contact before dropping them into a nylon bag she picked off the sidewalk on her way back. A feeling of lightness overtakes her, and she finds herself laughing at the old man asleep on the black pavement.
The rain is falling harder now. The sound of thunder echoes above her like a distant world.
As she handles each Stone, she stares over at Ryzaard and looks for any reaction. When the last Stone goes into the bag, her lips silently mouth a number.
Forty-nine.
Not realizing she has been counting the Stones, she moves back a couple of steps and drops the bag to the street. Then she picks up the pulse rifle in both hands and points the tip at Ryzaard’s chest.
She pumps and shoots the rifle five times.
The bullets are firing, but she can’t tell whether they are actually penetrating Ryzaard’s body. He has no reaction. And no blood.
Alexa checks the rifle. It has a fresh cartridge. She can afford to shoot hundreds of rounds into the old man. The moment he falls out of the time freeze or whatever Matt did to him, one of the shots will catch him and put an end to his miserable life.
All the Stones will soon belong to her.
As she pumps shot after shot into the body on the ground, she wonders what she will do with the Stones. Nothing like Ryzaard. Nothing heroic. Just live quietly somewhere in southern
Greece. Never have to live in fear again. Destroy Ryzaard’s empire and let the world go along on its merry way.
Interplanetary travel might be fun if she can figure out how to do it.
Firing down at the old man, she notices a sudden rise in his chest. She touches off a shot and watches carefully to see if it penetrates. A spot of blood pops up on his skin. She pumps the rifle again and pulls the trigger. He has a definite reaction. Ryzaard’s arms shake and his eyes start to flutter.
With a flick of her thumb, Alexa takes the rifle off manual and switches to automatic. It’s not something to do lightly. Once the automatic firing starts, it causes a peculiar pleasure that makes it difficult to stop. It’s easy to run through an entire pulse pack in a few seconds and have nothing left.
Alexa decides not to worry about it. Taking a deep breath, she points the tip of the pulse rifle down and sprays black projectiles back and forth across his chest and trunk, down his thigh and lower leg, across to the other leg and up through the chest and neck. She takes special pleasure in the shots through the forehead and eyes.
Red telltales light up on the side of the barrel, and with great reluctance, Alexa lifts the pad of her index finger off the trigger. The gun falls silent, and she looks down at the twitching mass on the pavement.
With one round left in the pack, she kneels to the pavement and stares at Ryzaard’s chest to confirm no movement. Then she leans close to his ear.
“Remember what you did to Jhata?” Alexa says. “Now it’s your turn. I have all your Stones. I’ll put them to good use.” She puts the tip of the rifle close to Ryzaard’s head and pushes it against the soft flesh of his temple. “Good bye.” A forced smile stretches her lips and bares her teeth.
She closes her eyes and pulls the trigger.
A voice speaks behind her. “You should have listened to Matt.”
A sharp point tears into the back of her neck, sending hot shards of pain down her spine. Her muscles no longer function, and she drops face down to the pavement. A tingling in her hands and feet turns into a searing burn. The stench of burnt flesh wafts around her. A heavy foot rolls her over and she stares up into Ryzaard’s eyes. Forty-nine Stones glow on his bare chest.
“Did you really think you could kill me? Take my Stones?”
Alexa tries to say yes, but her lips won’t move. All she can do is look into the eyes that hang above her like sharks in the water. With great effort, she tries to close her lids, but even that doesn’t work. Coldness flows through her body. Her vision narrows to a black tunnel and two burning points.
The voice above her drops down an octave and speaks in slow motion. “Where did they go?”
Again, she makes a great effort to answer, but can’t find the connection between her brain and her lips.
“Can’t talk?” Ryzaard bends down until his breath stings her eyes. “Let me help you with that.”
His hand goes out of her peripheral vision and comes back with a small blue jewel. “Hold on.” He holds it low in front of her eyes. “Looks like your nervous system is fried. I’ll need to do some rewiring.”
Ryzaard’s hand touches her neck. He grunts a couple of times, as if he is searching for a connection.
Then it hits.
Lightning shoots like a piston down her spinal cord. Sutures in her skull flicker as green and yellow negative images and flash white hot before going out like an exploding bluescreen. A Tibetan singing bowl rings in the darkness. The taste of burnt sulfur lies heavy on her tongue. She isn’t breathing and it doesn’t seem to matter.
I’m inside your mind. Open your eyes.
The voice comes from all directions, almost too loud to understand. She tries, and fails, to lift her eyelids. After another flash of pain, Ryzaard is standing an arm’s length away. But it’s all wrong, and then she realizes it’s a reverse image. Instead of darkness, they’re suspended in white empty space. Ryzaard’s face is black and his eyes are a shade of grey. White pinpoints of light pierce the exact center of each one.
Now you can talk.
Alexa opens her mouth. “What do you want?” She lifts a hand up to her face and stares at it. Dark purple against a white hot background.
Tell me where they went.
“To Hell.”
Her eyes explode into blooms of red-violet agony.
I can make you suffer.
“You have no power over me.”
Darkness opens up below her, and a bonfire ignites under her feet. Black flames engulf her body. She can’t fight back the pain and gives herself up to the screams erupting from her mouth.
Now tell me. Where did they go?
Alexa forces a smile. “Like I said. Go. To. Hell.”
The fire drops away, and a cloud of white hot stainless steel daggers swoops down and punctures her like tissue paper.
If you won’t tell me, I’ll find it myself.
Her mind begins to rip away, layer by layer, memory by memory in a flood of sensory stimuli. Random bursts of images, sounds, smells and textures jump out of the white space around her and blur together like merging rivers. The soft fur of a new kitten on her seventh birthday. The sweet taste of wild honeycomb from a hollow log in the mountains of southern Greece. A vein of crisp lightning dropping from the sky. The stab of a jellyfish sting in the ocean. A wood sliver touching a nerve in the sole of her foot.
Bits and pieces of Alexa’s past accumulate in multi-layered structures of image and sound and then crumble and fall away as each of them are discarded by Ryzaard.
Churning through the last of her life, he comes to the end and finds nothing. He drops through to the Core of her mind and stands before the thin ribbon of flesh that represents her last grip on life.
You’re of no use to me anymore, Alexa.
Goodbye.
With a quick flick of his wrist, he cuts the strand and watches it curl up to the ceiling. Then he’s back on the street in the driving rain, staring down at what remains of her.
He turns and walks away.
CHAPTER 81
They gather around the table to watch the ceremony on a large holo in the center.
“Have you seen the shrine Miyazawa built on the Mesh?” Jing-wei turns to Ryzaard. “We’ve been monitoring him. He spends most of his time there.”
“All the better if he prefers the Mesh to reality.” Without closing his eyes, Ryzaard relaxes into a sea of brilliant colors, sharp detail and endless structure. It blurs past and he stands in the courtyard of Miyazawa’s shrine. The cherry blossom torii gate rises above him. The aroma of its scented branches drops down. The young people that have traveled to the Mesh with him stand on either side.
Kalani reaches down and picks a pearl off the ground. He balances it in the palm of his hand and studies it close to his face. The voice of Miyazawa is audible in the minds of all.
One path to purity. One path to peace.
His hand reels back and drops the pearl. “Creepy place.”
“Do not underestimate the power of mundane words and simple ideas to inspire religious fervor.” Ryzaard steps to the smooth white trunk of the cherry tree. A single chord travels up his arm and spreads through his ears. “This shrine will become one of the most visited sites on the Mesh. To our advantage, of course.”
“The ceremony will be starting soon,” Jing-wei says. “We should go back.”
Ryzaard nods. Colors blur by, and they all sit around the crystal table.
Blue implants glow behind every ear.
CHAPTER 82
“High tide in five minutes, sir.” The assistant priest walks to the side of Miyazawa and lays her hand in his shoulder.
“Then let us drop down.” He slips an arm out of its sleeve. Stripping a green square from a nearby gelatinous mass, he places it against his inner bicep and closes his eyes to the rush of relaxation that flows up his spine like a slow glacier of blue ice.
The white heli-transport hovers over the ocean and floats down in a slow kiss with its mirror image in
the water. The glass door slides open two inches beyond Miyazawa’s nose. He takes a step out of the transport, and his wooden geta sandals press down onto the water.
Shouts of adulation rise from 300,000 Shinto acolytes waiting in anxious expectation on the shore.
Taking another step, both sandals are now firmly on the crystal walkway that rises up from the seabed a millimeter below the wet surface with each of his steps and falls away as he moves to the shore. He pauses directly under the floating torii gate and touches a fingertip to the freshly painted vermillion.
Two chords sing out in a harmonic double helix that weaves its way to a crescendo. As it vibrates inside his skull, the tension between his frontal cortex and his jaw becomes a source of pleasure.
Miyazawa steps through the torii gate. The 300,000 Shinto followers drop to their knees on the shore and press their foreheads to the ground. A sea of white-robed believers flow down from the green hills, across the beach to the blue water on which he walks.
He glides over the water on a straight line that takes him to a path of beaten gold cutting through the crowd and up the beach to the shrine entrance. Pausing at the bottom of marble steps, he reaches out and pulls sharply on a rope dangling in front of his eyes. A single, clear tone rings from the bell above. As if on cue, the robed believers raise their heads, look in his direction and bow. The sea of white robes is transformed to a sea of black hair.
Miyazawa ascends to the top of the steps and turns to face the crowd. Thousands of voices flow inside his body and come together into one that only he hears.
We are the Kami.
Two bluescreens, each fifty meters across, grow up out of the ground on his left and right. A live image of his face appears on the bluescreens.
It is the signal that something rare is about to happen. He wants to speak. As he opens his mouth, an indistinct sound comes out, as if several people, men and women, are trying to talk at once, each with a mouthful of marbles. There may have been a subtle shift of bones under the thin skin of his face. When it comes to a rest, the sound coalesces into one voice.
